Prohibition of Drug Dealing in School Zones
William Brownsberger and Susan Aromaa
Join Together, Boston University School of Public Health
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More than 20 states1 have enacted special penalties for drug violations near schools, parks and other areas where children congregate. This legislation resonates powerfully with the concerns all parents have for their children, and has enormous political appeal. Unfortunately, most legislatures have given little thought to the problem of how best to design this kind of legislation to protect children. Results from our study suggest that the Massachusetts version of such a statute has not been successful in moving drug-dealing away from schools.2
States have taken a variety of approaches in crafting school zone legislation - choosing diverse reference points, diverse radii, and diverse offense predicates. In Massachusetts, the legislature provided for a minimum mandatory two-year incarceration for dealing within 1000 feet of a primary, secondary or vocational school. The two years are additional to any other punishment imposed. Alabama imposes a supplemental 5-year state prison for drug dealing within a 3-mile radius of any educational institution, including colleges and universities as well as schools. Washington includes, inter alia, schools, school buses, transit stop shelters, and housing projects and civic centers designated by local governments. Washington provides exemptions for marijuana leaves and for transactions occurring in a private residence with no children present if the transactions are not for profit. State statutes also vary in how the school zone penalty provisions interact with other statutory provisions.
The common denominator of these statutes is the enhancement of penalties for drug dealing based on geography. The physical layout of cities and towns in the state and the geographic patterns of drug dealing thus become important factors in determining the impact of the statute. Legislators have made gut judgments about how far they would like to see drug dealing retreat from places frequented by young people, but have rarely, if ever, benefited from data about the physical layout or distribution of dealing in their communities.
In our recent Massachusetts study, we used a combination of aerial photography, municipal geographic information systems, commercial street mapping data and hand-held geographic positioning system (GPS) measurements to plot schools, parks and drug dealing incidents in three cities in Massachusetts. The research team started with case files from the local District Attorneys' offices. Based on the police reports in those files, the research team visited more than 400 drug- dealing locations and walked school boundaries with a handheld GPS. We triangulated between that field data and the other available electronic data to derive accurate maps of school zones and drug dealing locations.
In the cities we studied, as in many older communities in Massachusetts, small neighborhood schools dot the downtown areas, with the result that most of the urban core falls within the enhanced-penalty area. The illustration below shows schools and school zones in downtown New Bedford, Massachusetts. As is clear from the illustration, the shaded school zone areas overlap substantially and create a broad and complex pattern of penalty enhancement.
 Figure 1: Schools and schools zones in downtown New Bedford, Massachusetts. |
Common sense suggests that this pattern of penalty enhancement would likely baffle most of the offenders whom the legislature sought to influence by the threat of enhanced penalties. Based on our computer analysis, 84% of all drug dealing cases within the city limits occurred within school zones. With penalties enhanced virtually everywhere, there is no place that offenders are especially motivated to avoid.
Our mapping of the proximity of dealing to schools confirms this. The density of drug dealing incidents - incidents per square mile of area - was highest closer to schools. There was little dealing actually on school premises, but the areas around schools tended to have densities higher than other areas. Of course, this cross-sectional analysis does not prove that the school zone law made no difference. It may be that the law decreased the density of dealing around school when it was first introduced. Our study was not designed initially to answer this question. Moreover, it is likely that the records that would allow a longitudinal comparison are prohibitively difficult to access at this point, since the law was introduced in 1989.
Our review of case files did not suggest that drug dealers were selling drugs to children. Only one of our 443 study cases involved a sale to a minor, and in that case, there was a personal relationship between the adult and the minor - it was not a street sale. More than 70% of the cases occurred when school was not in session. None of the cases involved a street pusher enticing children - the image that justifies the legislation in the minds of many.
The interpretation of the results of the study most favorable to the school zone legislation would run as follows: The school zone statute is designed to keep the activity of drug dealing, with its attendant hazardous litter and undesirable traffic, away from schools, whether or not sales are being made to children. The statute does seem to keep the density of dealing, or at least of dealing that becomes known to the police, low on school premises. That dealing persists in the zones around schools does not show the law is not having an effect; the situation might be worse without the law.
We drew a different conclusion from the data. The statute does not serve its intended purpose. The patterns of enhancement on the maps suggest that it is virtually impossible for a drug seller to avoid enhancement zones. Moreover, dealers tend to deal near their homes. In our data, 34% of drug transactions occurred within 500 feet of the dealer's residence and 79% within 10,000 feet; 73% of the dealers in school zone cases resided within school zones.
The overwhelming majority of all drug dealing cases in Massachusetts are initially charged as school zone cases (although they may be "broken down" to lesser charges in plea bargaining). The policy result of the legislation is not better protection for schools, but rather a general elevation of penalty levels. First offense low-level dealing of drugs in Massachusetts does not carry any mandatory minimum penalty.3 The school zone penalty is the dominant minimum mandatory sentence in Massachusetts.
We recommended that the state narrow the applicability of the school statute to 100 feet and perhaps enhance the penalties within that area. This would have resulted in a much-reduced applicability of mandatory minimum sentences in Massachusetts. One chamber of the legislature was at work on a legislative reform package while our study was released in July 2001. While legislators did consider results of the study, prosecutors strongly opposed modification of the school zone statute and ultimately the package let the school zone statute stand.
Endnotes
- See Bateman, T., "Validity, Construction and Application of State Statutes Prohibiting Sale or Possession of Controlled Substances within Specified Distance of Schools," 27 ALR 5th 593 (1995).
- Brownsberger, W. and Aromaa, S. "An Empirical Study of the School Zone Law in Three Cities in Massachusetts." Join Together, Boston, Massachusetts. Full text available at http://www.jointogether.org/sa/files/pdf/school_zone.pdf.
- There is a one-year mandatory minimum for cocaine dealing if a prosecutor seeks indictment, but this is rarely done because most dealing cases are school zone cases and the school zone provides a two year mandatory minimum.
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